A New Year Devotion from Matthew Henry: Trusting Our Times to God

by Jessica, posted in Christian Living

On January 1, 1713, the Bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote the reflections below that feel especially timely as I enter the new year of 2026.  As I read them, I am reminded how impossible it is to live up to such devotion without God’s help.  May our gracious God guide and strengthen me, helping me to approach this year with the same spirit of submission and commitment that Henry exemplified in his writing:

Firmly believing that my times are in God’s hand, I here submit myself and all my affairs for the ensuing year to the wise and gracious disposal of the divine providence. Continue reading “A New Year Devotion from Matthew Henry: Trusting Our Times to God” →

Eight Helps for Progress in Holiness (from Thomas Brooks)

by Jessica, posted in Christian Living

I was reading Thomas Brooks’ The Crown and Glory of Christianity, and his chapter on “Eight means, helps, and directions for progress in holiness,” stood out to me.  Brooks’s reflections offer wise counsel for growth in holiness, reminding believers that progress in sanctification requires deliberate practice and dependence upon God. I wanted to jot down some of my takeaways as reminders and encouragement.

Continue reading “Eight Helps for Progress in Holiness (from Thomas Brooks)” →

Providence

by Jessica, posted in Christian Living

This quotation by a 17th-century pastor, Willem Teellinck, offers encouragement to me in light of today’s news and event (from Redeeming the Time, p. 36):

When you begin to consider the things which are happening all over the world, always remember that the Lord is working in them.  He who can bring light out of darkness, will yet from the completed and combined work bring forth something glorious.  Be not therefore too much vexed that there appears somewhere to come an ill stroke in your own affairs, or in the affairs of God’s people in your day, as is now the case; for the Lord would not permit this to take place, did He not mean to use it as a background to give the whole work a more beautiful lustre.

Keep the Heart as Keeping a Garden

by Jessica, posted in Christian Living

From Thomas Watson’s Sermon, The Spiritual Watch:

Keep your heart as you would keep a garden.  Your heart is a garden (Song of Solomon 4:12); weed all sin out of your heart.  Among the flowers of the heart, weeds will be growing—the weeds of pride, malice, and covetousness: these grow without planting and cultivating. Therefore be weeding your heart daily by prayer, examination, and repentance.

Continue reading “Keep the Heart as Keeping a Garden” →

James Durham on Providence

by Jessica, posted in Christian Living

Reading a troubling news yesterday made this quotation poignant to me:

“And therefore: Let us stay our faith here, that our Lord is still working in all these confusions.  And when matters are turned upside down to human appearance, our blessed Lord is not nonplussed and at a stand when we are; he knows well what he is doing, and will make all things most certainly, infallibly, and infrustrably to work for his own glory, and for the good of his people.”

—James Durham, Christ Crucified: The Marrow of the Gospel in 72 Sermons on Isaiah 53, Sermon 34 (on Isa. 53.9), p. 358

Old Library at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

A World of Thought

by Jessica, posted in Reading

Bishop Joseph Hall, Meditation on the Sight of a Large Library:

What a world of wit is here packed up together! I know not whether this sight doth more dismay or comfort me. It dismays me to think that here is so much that I cannot know; it comforts me to think that this variety affords so much assistance to know what I should. There is no truer word than that of Solomon; There is no end of making many books. This sight verifies it. There is no end: indeed it were a pity there should . . . Continue reading “A World of Thought” →

Arming of Christian

One-Year Reading Plan for Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour

by Jessica, posted in Reading

Christian in Complete Armour by William GurnallI came across a one-year reading plan of William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour.  It could seem a bit intimidating to tackle this unabridged volume of 1,100+ pages.  The grand theme of this book is spiritual warfare and how the Christian can furnish with ‘spiritual arms for the battle’ against the Satanic foe.

Sin never relaxes.  It never takes a vacation.  Our indwelling sin doesn’t lie down and wake up the next moment.  The Puritan John Owen wrote that sin may be most active when it seems to be the most dormant to us, hence we must be vigilant and vigorous against it in our spiritual warfare at all times and in all conditions, even when there is least suspicion.

Continue reading “One-Year Reading Plan for Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour” →